Sporting Madness

Today was Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day in the U.S.), so I've been doing a lot of reflecting on soldiers, wars and history. Ryan Gallivan has a good round-up of some excellent reading for the day, including this tremendous piece from Matt Ufford of Kissing Suzy Kolber fame on his experiences in Iraq, so I encourage you to check that out. However, there's one other story that always comes to my mind around now, and it's one that truly deserves to be remembered. If you haven't yet, I urge you to read Gary Smith 's excellent stories on former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman . If you have read them, go back and look at them again; they're well worth it. Tillman gave up a lucrative career in the NFL to go serve his country in the wake of the September 11 attacks and tragically lost his life doing so. What impressed me even more than his decision, though, was the outstanding person he was from all accounts. I love these pieces because Smith doesn...

In the first panel of the Blogs With Balls: Las Vegas conference, the focus was on athletes and their attempts to connect directly with fans. The second panel took up the rather broad topic of "The Future of Sports Media", but produced some really interesting discussions. It was moderated by Dan Shanoff of The Sporting Blog , Tim Teblog and DanShanoff.com . The panelists were Nathaniel Friedman (better known as Bethlehem Shoals ) of The Sporting Blog , The Baseline and Free Darko , Matt Ufford of Kissing Suzy Kolber , With Leather and Warming Glow , Kevin Blackistone of FanHouse , Around the Horn and the University of Maryland, and Amy K. Nelson of ESPN.com . It was a solid, diverse group. Friedman and Ufford both started off as small, independent bloggers (as did Shanoff to a degree, but he wound up with ESPN pretty quickly) who then made it big, while Blackistone's a former newspaper guy who's made the jump to the web, but is possibly most famous for his...

(Full credit to the illustrious Hunter S. Thompson , whose Gonzo Papers I am currently reading, for title inspiration...) I'm down in Las Vegas for the Blogs With Balls 2.0 sports blogging convention, and am thoroughly enjoying it thus far. Things kicked off this morning with a superb introductory video featuring Will Leitch , Matt Ufford and A.J. Daulerio . The video is presented below (from the Blogs With Balls site via HH Reynolds ): Blogs With Balls 2.0 Intro from HHR on Vimeo . After the introduction, it was time for the first panel, which discussed athletes' abilities to directly connect to their fans through blogs, Twitter and other mediums. The panel featured former Bengals defensive tackle John Thornton (now running JockBiz and All Pro Blogger ], Yardbarker CEO Pete Vlastelica , ESPN VP of series production and development Ron Wechsler and Carrot Creative president Mike Germano , and was moderated by Matt Sebek of Joe Sports Fan . (Shaky cellpho...